148 Light through Stained Glass

   (Note: This blog entry is based on the text for “Light through Stained Glass”, originally shared on September 13, 2021. It was the 148^th video for our YouTube Channel, Streams of Living Water (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCB7KnYS1bpHKaL2OseQWCnw), co-produced with my wife, Rev. Sally Welch.) 

   Have you ever noticed that stained glass only has meaning if it’s on the other side of the light?  What does that tell us about making it through this pandemic? And what does it say about serving others in a meaningful way? Today, we’ll find out.

   We bought a piece of stained-glass art at Nepenthe in Big Sur on a camping trip many years ago. I liked it because it seemed to me to be a description of the Trinity, and we found it in a place with very little overtly Christian art. It has a round shape with light beaming out of it, surrounded by smaller round shapes, like the Creation of the cosmos, a multi-colored cross in a blood-red cross, and a white dove on a golden background; the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. It looks different, though, if the light is shining on it rather than through it.

   Look at a church’s stained-glass windows from the outside during the day and you’ll see a glossy grey/brown stain on a wall. Look at them from the inside and you see colors and shapes and meaning.

   Look at a church’s stained-glass windows from the outside at night and you’ll see vibrant colors and friendly figures that seem to invite you to come in. Look at them from the inside at night and you’ll see black frames and a matte black void.

   What’s the difference? The light.

   Churches have used stained glass to communicate the reality and presence of God for over 1,000 years.

   In the middle-ages, the use of stained glass in churches came to its pinnacle at a time of great illiteracy. Churches were often the only institutions providing schools and people learned to read by reading the Bible. That had been true since the beginning of the Christian movement.

   But those who didn’t learn to read were taught the Bible with pictures, the ones they saw in their churches and cathedrals. Larger cathedrals and churches incorporated other media, like paintings, sculptures, and mosaics, along with the stained-glass, using multi-media to work together in order to tell the Bible’s story of salvation.

   Construction methods had allowed the provision of open space in the walls and ends of the churches while they still safely supported the roof. That roof could include a dome, which also could be made of stained-glass.

   Those spaces were strong enough to be filled with a fragile material like colored bits of glass and their lead frames. The glass that filled the space, however, had to be made so that each piece of glass was able to support the weight of all the glass above it in that space. They were sometimes assembled in frames of iron or stone.

   But one more element was necessary to communicate the meaning of the Bible in stained-glass, an element without which those windows would be just stories. That element was the light, both literally and figuratively.

   Jesus said, in John 8:12:

¹² Again Jesus spoke to them, saying, “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness but will have the light of life.”

   The light of this world shows us what the stories are. The light that is Jesus Christ tells us what they mean.

   To walk in darkness means to be unable to see things as they are, to stumble and to be afraid. To walk in the light means to see things as they are, to not stumble and to not be afraid, not because we have seen them ourselves, but because we have seen the light.

   To walk in darkness means to walk in ignorance of God. To walk in death.

   John begins his gospel with these words about the meaning of the birth of Jesus , in John 1:1-5:

1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. ² He was in the beginning with God. ³ All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being ⁴ in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. ⁵ The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.

   The Christian faith often looks like a stained-glass window, meaningless to those outside of it. It looked that way to many who were formerly outside it and who   are now inside it.

   Paul writes in his first letter to the Corinthians, the 1^st chapter, the 18^th verse:

¹⁸ For the message about the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.

   Jesus is the light of the world, and we are reflectors of that light. He is God made visible.

   As Paul writes in his letter to the Colossians the 1^st chapter, verses 9-14:

⁹ For this reason, since the day we heard it, we have not ceased praying for you and asking that you may be filled with the knowledge of God’s will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding, ¹⁰ so that you may lead lives worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to him, as you bear fruit in every good work and as you grow in the knowledge of God. ¹¹ May you be made strong with all the strength that comes from his glorious power, and may you be prepared to endure everything with patience, while joyfully ¹² giving thanks to the Father, who has enabled you to share in the inheritance of the saints in the light. ¹³ He has rescued us from the power of darkness and transferred us into the kingdom of his beloved Son, ¹⁴ in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.

   We will make it through the darkness of this pandemic because Jesus is the light of the world, and we live in the light. We are no longer living in the darkness, but in the already but not fully perfected reign of God. God has revealed this to us in Jesus Christ, like light coming through a stained-glass window.

   We belong to God, and therefore are called, equipped, and sent to love one another in word and in deed as followers of Jesus Christ. That love extends to the whole world, because God loves the world.

   That brings us back to the piece that I bought in Big Sur.

   Anyone with a knowledge of Christianity could look at it and say, “Oh, it’s the Trinity”.

   But, to know what the Trinity is, and what is means, who God is, and how God has revealed God’s self to human beings, that requires the Light.

   We are not the light, but we can be the reflectors of the light. We can serve others by bringing others to the living present reality of Jesus, the light of the world.